Restoration Road

Hi Sonic

Can you take some pictures that show the whole front wall?

What happens when you take the floor standing PZCs out?

The comment you made about the piece of wood that you set in your front pressure zone is interesting and very consistent with what should happen. Not that the sound got bad, but that there was an effect. Any thing that you put inbetween you and the front wall (or any wall) should be able to be heard. If not you know there is something wrong with the amount of absorption you have (over kill).

When looking at the picture you supplied it looks like the room is already in over kill mode, but this might not be the case at all. A bigger empty room can produce a ton of energy and with the extremely high ceilings that you have it's like adding another third more energy than an 8' ceiling. Plus there is not furniture up there breaking up the pressure.

Hi Michael

Here's a couple of learnings that might help shed light on Sonic's room:

1. Putting a plywood piece in my front Left pressure zone led to a sound I didn't find pleasing or accurate but a genuine Michael Green hemlock chipboard shelf from a clamprack in the same place sounded very good, better even than when there was nothing there -- that is why Sonic says an audiophile cannot go and assume racks, supports and devices are material-neutral. You can have two similar platforms -- one store-bought plywood and one cured wood from Michael -- and you can get a large difference in result showing that the material may be as important or more important than the obvious purpose of the device, eg: to support a turntable or something.

2. Another example -- some audiophiles think diffusors are the way to go to tame their room acoustics, so they look for slat and quadratic diffusors. The real professional stuff is expensive. So what some people in Asia have tried is to measure a real diffusor and cloning it out of cheap plywood or even styrofoam. I have heard some of these and they sound horrible. The owners/sellers get defensive and say "this [foam] diffusor is modelled on a studio diffusor made by [Name]"...implying it should sound the same. Sonic just stays quiet. If the professional diffusor from [Name company] sounded like this, they will have been out of business in minutes.

3. My room -- had an idea yesterday to join some EchoTunes and mount them on the side walls between the speakers and the front corners and remove the Sound Shutters in that place.

I joined two EchoTunes per side wall with paper clips, folded the Sound Shutters and mounted the EchoTune assembly where the shutters are. The soundstage widened and I got an increase in detail. The image placement was also nicely balanced Left to Right. I could hear more music outside the speaker positions and the side walls of the room.

It appears that adding more "controlled burn" in my room is still giving benefits. OTH I have tested a large increase in absorptive material in my room and the acoustic does go dry and shut down just as Michael says. Right now, I am not close to this "shut down" level of absorption.

Yes, it seems that Michael's theory that Sonic's large and live room is giving me more energy than expected and that is why the increase in absorption is working when in other rooms it is "overkill".

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Your comment about the homemade stuff is funny. I've been down this road a few thousand times and it always cracks me up.

As far as all the dampening being introduced I'm watching in learn mode. I've had people go from full dead to full live over the many years so that part is not that big of a shock. What is shocking me is the huge jumps being taken and the fact that you were hearing big changes happen with tiny tweaks before. And I guess what I'm trying to get my head around is how (if the room had that much over the top energy) did you hear those changes? It's easier if I'm there but fascinating being this far away.

I'm looking forward to when you start removing stuff after you reach over saturation and hearing the sound you are missing, but at the present it sounds like you have actually gained in content and that has me thinking bigtime if not scratching my head. Very rarely have I ever heard direct dampening not take away from the content. At the same time maybe the content was lacking because of the over kill of energy and now you are hearing more of what is there. Either way tuning in this new direction is quite fun to not only watch but explore. When you get your room down to the level that is good for you it will be interesting hearing a barricade approach to what is going on. meaning, same amount of dampening but the dampening being on the back side of barricading materials. It also has me thinking should some venting/porting be going on? Even on a bigger scale than the pressure boxes.

You have my attention sir!

Hi Michael

Since May 12, Sonic has been using three Pressure Boxes in my room -- the first was placed ahead of my listening chair, then one went near the front LH corner of the room and a third on top of the Bookcase Wall behind my listening chair.

Over the last 10 days as the system settled, Sonic found the music to get dimensionally flatter, like in an over-damped room. This made the sound more hifi-like, lower in volume getting me worried what could hve caused this. Removing the third Pressure Box that was on the Bookcase Wall restored the life and dimensionality to the sound. The L-R image balance also became better and closer to what I hear in live musick.

Sonic is therefore down to two Pressure Boxes now. Also found that regardless of the BOO! test, a little extended reverberation makes for a more live-like sound. A BOO!] with a hard stop didn't sound right.

After this setting I'll test Michael's suggestion to try absorptive material on the rear wall and remove the FS-PZCs from their position behind the main rack.

Sonic

Bingo! We need energy to recreate music. People who live in a dead world will find two things.

1) they need to push the amp harder

2) they loose musical balance, music sound lifeless


Every time I have ever followed the rule of dead I have lost music. Every time! A good test is how the dead room makes amps work harder. If an amp is not working with ease it is distorting.

Interesting watching you come to the conclusions on the other side of the world.

Hi Zonees

Now with the third Pressure Box removed, the sound in my room is again alive and stable so Sonic can move ahead to test more options.

Where the Sound Shutters are in the forward 1/4 of my side walls, where I had tried EchoTunes joined with paper clips, Sonic hung small cotton carpets of a variety from India, one on each side wall (the ETs removed of course).

The volume is still good and the first impression is the carpets, which are absorptive on the side walls, are creating a much wider soundstage than when my room was reverberant!

Whether this width is natural or an exaggerated artifact will decided after settling but there is now a bigger sound and a size of images which is close to my idealised recall when Sonic listened to a wonderful JBL horn system drive by flea watt home-brewed tube amplification. Good!

Lets follow this as settling take place.

Sonic

Hi Zonees

After another day of musick play, Sonic is finding the soundstage staying nicely dimensional and wide. The volume setting on my amp for a perceived volume level is about the same.

Then my Tuning Thinking led me to an experiment - try the system with the Sony Blu-Ray player driving the Quicksilver directly from the player's analog outputs and not its digital output through the Musical Fidelity V-DAC.

Up till now, the sound run direct from the Sony's analog stage was thin, abnormally wide in width, all round flat and fatiguing. The V-DAC gave weight and solidity contributing realism to the sound. I had written off the analog stage of the Sony.

Now, run direct with the room tuned as it is, Sonic found a surprisingly good sound from the Sony I had to raise the volume setting a little (by 1 or 2 clicks on the pre-amp -- this could be due to the slightly lower output from the Sony compared to the V-DAC) but there is no thinness, I got a good frequency balance, the images are lined up behind the Magenplanar 1.5QRs, almost no sound or imaging from the speakers themselves.

Listened to harpsichord musick by Forqueray, ensemble works from Marais, piano works from Cage, some Palestrina and Lester Young.

The Sony blu-ray player run direct to the pre-amp is so good that Sonic had no eagerness to switch it off and replace the V-DAC. A listening session of three hours plus showed none of the earlier weaknesses of the Sony's analog output stage.

This is unexpectedly good, and if this works Sonic is moving towards the ideal "simpler" system set up that Michael is so excited about.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Do you have pics?

And I guess, do you have pics in stages? When reading through the last couple of weeks in my mind I'm trying to follow the course. It's a little hard to visualize the movements being made. I would have emailed you this and asked but I think that in this case it is important for readers to see a process.

The source issue I find very interesting if I am hearing you correctly. For myself I have always come back to simple. When I treat my system as a whole (using all the tune tools) I come back to the sound of parts being parts and signal being signal. To me, using other stuff outside of the tune brings in a fixed sound that I end up needing to work around to voice instead of tuning in the instrument that hopefully I have created faithfully.

You and Bob this week have given me some thoughts that up till now with your recent changes were a bit perplexing. One of them being listening to his totally tunable system in a hard room, and the second is when you mentioned horns and the sound of them. It has dawned on me that perhasp you are voicing your system around one of the fixed sonic features of your system "your speakers". At first while hearing you talk about these different materials in your room I was saying "what is he doing?" It sounds like he is going backward. He is replacing this with that? It didn't make sense to me. I could understand the part about having too much energy because of the walls and size of the room, but what you are using to get the sound you were talking about didn't fly. Many of these materials in my testing burn energy in such a way that I would never use them in a direct burn situation let alone putting them in a room where vibration is needed. It's important to note vibration in the mechanical sense and not the reflection of your hard walls. I would have immediately started thinking PZCs and other wood materials and not cloth. Cloth ok for a burn (still not my choice) but direct absortion? No way! Then you said the horn sound that you have listened to and the picture cleared for me. You are not voicing the sound of the tune, you are voicing the sound of the Maggies! The "room wall / Maggie" combo is what you are voicing in.

When you said the simple BluRay was now doing some good things and you mentioned the big horns lights turned on for me. There are some big differences between Maggies in a big hard room, horns and tunable speakers. I have to flash back to my Western Electric/Altec/JBL/Eminence days and my panel days and put them into perspective with tuning.

Here's where I had to put my cap on. When you were saying that rooms in your part of the world are different from here it made my ears stand up. I thought "have I missed something?". It's in my nature to want to cover all the basis, and the thought that I have missed a room type sends chills up my spine. Not that I know it all, but that I thought I had a handle on it from all the time that I spent in Hong Kong and trips to other parts, plus getting feed back from listeners. This is why I asked you to send me lists of materials and pics so I could see what I have missed. Well, from my on-line searching I feel relieved The materials used in your place are not that different from what is used over here and other parts of the world.

Hi Michael

You may be right about Sonic voicing the "room/wall/Maggie" combo. While I can tell the effect of a change of material or introduction of thingsinto the listening space, it is a total tone and soundfield I am trying to create -- maybe it is my inexperience that I don't or can't tell if a particular tune is addressing what. However in the end, I am listening to a totality as Michael points out, "the room is the loudspeaker."

Do I obsess over the JBL experience I had? Perhaps I do but that is one of my audio high points -- I had a several and I can talk about them but the JBL was mindblowing -- not perfect but something outside anything I heard till that time.

Also my Tuning is, I guess a form of flying blind. I have not heard a Tuned System -- I have read about Hiend1's set up, Cdimi, Drewster and Michael's adventures but these are written descriptions in the end. Someone can for instance describe a concert of Sigiswald Kuijken playing Bach. It might be a well written description of the maestro playing violin works by the Great Master but I still have not heard the concert. Simply put, I wasn't there, I did not experience it.

What does a Tuned system really sound like? I have no idea. Is the 50-foot square soundstage with layers of previously unheard details in the recording something literal or hyperbole? Dunno till I hear it. What keeps me going is that Michael's ideas and gear have delivered the goods repeatedly. My system is now something else from "normal " audio and miles from where i started. What the feasible goal is however, I have no idea at this time.

I started changing tack after coming off my failed attempt to remove the subwoofer and simplify the system. That period showed me how echoey my system was and that real music in real spaces do not have such reverberation characteristics. Call this Phase 1.

Phase 2: Lots of BOO! tests that gave me BOOooo!

Phase 3: By end April I had enough and bought the curtains and put them up. Pix in this thread. This was a major improvement in my room.

Phase 4: Pressure Boxes went in -- 3 of them then down to two. Then put up small cotton carpets on the side walls behind the Magneplanars last week.

Finally I am back to a stable point. The success of the removal of the V-DAC is encouraging and three days of settling and listening show further improvement.

Today i put the Sony on the Balsa pieces fromerly supporting the V-DAC (player still on upturned Space Cones) and Harmonic Springs between the balsa and the Clamprack shelf -- no good, the vibration from certain CDs came back. Next, Sonic stuck the Space Cones using 3M tape to the Sony's casing with the points down like conventional cones and moved the player to the top shelf of the Clamprack (that is, no shelf above the player now).

Last time I tried the Sony Blu-ray player here resulted in a poor sound. Now the sound is better than ever. Feels good to make progress again.

Couple of questions about your set up, Michael:

a. What's the vented port behind your Tuneable wall? How can I use the space behind my Bookcase Wall in a similar way?

b. You have tuned the walls down the hall outside your small listening room -- this means you listen with the door open? Isn't that something we should avoid?

Sonic

Hey Michael,

Forgot to ask you one more question -- are finned heatsinks on amps and processor chips bad? I am told they ring and add coloration. In what way can they be tuned?

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

As the week progressed it became clearer that the small cotton curtains on the side walls were imposing a signature of their own. The overall frequency envelop stayed intact but inner voices and transients got smeared and out of step with each other.

An inner dullness you might say. ALso images seemed odd and distorted in shape the closer they were to the curtained area. This was imposed on every recording Sonic played so the writing was on the wall -- down/out went the sidweall curtains.

When I played music again you could almost hear the room (and the performers?) breathe a sigh of relief.

Michael, let me have your views quickly on this since there are some ideas I have for tuning this weekend. Also please look at my questions about the effect of heatsinks and your vented port behind your tunable wall. I am now working to have more control high up my room height.

Sonic also wonders if my doors are too thin and the sound is leaking out with too little resistance. How do I know what my walls are doing to my room and what they are losing?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Your learning some very important things about materials and that is priceless. Your also learning about space. It has been my experience to hear everything presented in the room and in time if not immediately it shows up in the music. Materials don't burn energy then disappear like we would hope. They always leave a signature. This is one reason why I try to stick with the barricade approach as much as I can. This way the burn can happen without the absorbent material itself sticking out sonically. I do use cotton but very sparingly and I also treat it so that the fibers pass energy and don't burn it too much. Yes, it does sound exactly like the room sighs. When you get closer the room relaxes.

Heatsink fins can be nasty and is another reason I try to make the room have as much energy as possible. When an amp over works the vibration of the heatsinks goes up and the distortion from them gets worse. Heatsink distortion goes directly back into the signal path and causes a hashy sound. The problem with tuning them is if you put the wrong material on them they get even more hot. What I use to do before I started using equipment that didn't heat up is either drill the sinks and use metal bolts to tune them or wrap them in copper mesh or even set them on aluminum rails. Keep in mind that a heatsink changes pitch as it heats so if you fined the right temp that makes the fins vibrate the least they don't get that noisy.

When you were working on the simple system and I was traveling I wish I would have caught you before you put the sub back in. Reason being I feel that if you use your room as a place to make vents and such behind you, you might find a way to use the room as an equalizer. The interesting about going down this road is going to be the height of the room. In all honesty your space would be the perfect candidate for building a room inside of a room. Do me a favor and build a wall out of what ever you have that is wood, and make wall as if it went across the room where the bookcase is. You will start to hear the energy in the room divide itself from the front part of the room to the rear part. Once you get the sense that this is happening you can then start shaping the sound in the back to effect the sound in the front like a port.



The best way to know what your walls sound like is to walk around other walls in other places or walk outside by an area that has a very balanced sound to you. You will get the sense of presence. Like if you take your guitar outside and talk to the back of it. You will hear this very clean dynamic sound that is full. Once you hear this full range balanced sound then go into your room and talk to your wall and listen to what is missing or what is gained. Usually hard walls will sound like they are missing body and warmth. Setting something close to that wall that has this warmth will start to tell that area's pressure zone to sound warmer.

Let me also say that if the vent/port starts to work for you it can tell the front listening area what to sound like without hurting the soundstage.

Hi Michael

That's useful.

Sonic tried a few tuning actions today with a pair of FS-Deco Tunes and althought I got no improvements, Sonic learnt a few things:

a. My room has very significant flow effects down the length along the side walls and on the ceiling near the sidewalls. Any action to break this flow up is immediately audible. Put a DT touching the side walls along length you can hear it (not necessarily an improvement).

b. Flow effects across the room (the short side) on the other hand are negligible and much less audible

c. Any baffles or tuning panels near the loudspeakers increase soundstage width but makes the spekaers audible as sources of the sound. Also emphasized the upper midrange and treble level.

d. The two FS-DRTs behind/next to my listening chair are essential -- without them, the rear ambience disappears and reverb doesn't have width but starts to converge to a point behind Sonic.

e. The centre of my room is where treatment is needed to make the Tune work. It is also difficult to apply unless on the ceiling.

f. I need treatment in the upper volume of my room.

Michael, can I hang DTs on my ceiling like Large Sound Shutters?

Sonic

Sure you can. Anything to start hearing the energy flow differently in the back of the room. You may or may not like venting but it is a learning thing.

Also when was the last time you had your system setup side ways? While your making bigger changes I would try this as well.

Hi Michael and Zonees

So down came two Shutters -- the rear most ones on the ceiling at the 1/4 width points in the area over the listening chair.

I hung two DecoTunes from the Shutter brackets using string and tie wraps. The reflective side faced the speakers, absorptive side towards the rear wall.

What a change!

From the first notes there was more texture and fine detail, the soundstage now appeared higher in the room and everything went quieter.

The room started to feel more calm and the tone more correct. It is a definite improvement but I must qualify -- Sonic didn't for instance hear instruments or details I never heard before, just that the low-level details are now more realistic and whole.

There is a long way to go but this shows Sonic that we are finally tackling the right problem -- that is the energy of the room volume from its height. Very good!


Sonic

Very good indeed! I'm glad your able to hang bigger objects from the ceiling. There is a ton of energy up there.

Michael -- a mystery for you:

Have a look at this scan -- I couldn't post pictures because I lost the mini-USB connector from my camera to the computer, so I did a sketch instead:





Drawing A shows how I mounted the two DecoTunes at the rear of the room over the Bookcases using the Shutter mounting points (the Shutters removed of course). The reflective side faces forward into the room, towards the speakers.

The effect of A is fabulous -- room control, micro-details, bass articulation and image focus. Very good as I pointed out earlier.

A couple of days later, I brought in another pair of DecoTunes, took down the side Shutters in the front of the room and hung the DecoTunes up.

See Drawing B. The reflective sides faced the listener as viewed from the sketch.

The effect was FAIL Big Time -- room control gone, the BOOooo! came back with a single note (a B-flat) audibly ringing, soundstage width shank inwards to the centre and the sound became bright and tiring. Setting up B negated all the benefits of A. Thre is a shift upwards in pitch.

The effect got worse the more the system stabilised and after about four hours of music playing time got pretty intolerable.

A was mounted when B went up and the other devices controlling the acoustics like the FS-PZCs and FS-DRTs were in their usual places.

Michael -- what does this tell you about my room and what can I do to get more of the benefits of A?

Sonic

Sonic

Flip the DecoTunes around in the front with the absorbent side facing you. Where are the Maggies in relationship to the DecoTunes? Sounds like there was a fight going on between the walls/DTpanels/speaker panels. Also the DecoTunes facing each other in the front and the back could have created a crosstalk wave build up between them if they are in line with each other.

Hi Michael and Zonees





While Sonic was waiting for Michael’s views on the disappointing effect of the DecoTunes on the ceiling in the forward portion of my room, I tried A1.

I hung a single DecoTune between the two already installed above my Bookcase Wall. The reflective side faced forward into the room (and towards the viewer of the picture).

The effect wasn’t good – the sound thickened and the pace slowed up. Transients were still sharp but there was something in the inner voices that had gone thick. It was a slight effect but it compromised the excellent effect from just the two Decotunes to the left and right over my Bookcase Wall.

I let the system run in with lots of musick play but three days of concerted running in made no difference. So back up went the Shutter. And Michael’s reply arrived.

Sonic Moved to B1 – Decotunes in the forward portion of my room with the absorptive side facing the listener. In the picture, I have also sketched in the position of the Magnaplanar 1.5QRs. They are closer to the listener than the DecoTunes on the ceiling.

The result is more slowness now with a noticeable loss of volume along with a serious narrowing of the soundstage width. The images are more recessed into the rear of the soundstage and lacked impact..But while the acoustics seemed quieter, there is something ghostly in the decay – as the music dies away, I can hear notes that still ring on. Notes unrelated to the musick being played. This is disconcerting but there is more: the recordings I played had different part of the sound emphasized so that a familiar recording became unfamiliar.

Michael – what does this say about Sonic’s room? What can I do next with the Decotunes. One thing is I’ll put a single DecoTune up at centre-front above the equipment racks. I’ll try this with the reflective side facing the listener of away.

Michael -- what can I do next given these results?

Sonic

With the DecoTunes in the front take down the curtain and tell me what happens. I'm glad to hear that when you face the dampened side facing you, you can hear the decrease of music.

Since the days of you having more energy I have tried to picture where you have gone after the Boo testing and am not able to get my ears around what is going on without being there. The main reason is I still can't picture direct absorption being a part of the answer. I would have to hear this in person to see what we are dealing with. When I hear direct absorption just as you did with the DecoTunes being turned around there is a decrease. When I try a curtain on any of my front walls this same decrease is there. So with you saying that the cotton curtain on the front wall doesn't give you this in my mind I'm trying to picture something that is very rare in my book. It would have to be a weird set of wave build up to make sense for me. Maybe something along the lines of the maggies needing part of their wave formation being burnt, but even this seems odd as it is audible to hear the back of a panel dampened in relationship to the deadening of the wall. Are the maggies in your room presenting a conflict with the rooms construction? I don't know this answer but there is something missing to this puzzle. Something I'm not hearing from what you are saying.

Hi Michael

The Magneplanars certainly do affect the acoustics – anything that large will. I know this because doing the BOO! test Sonic can hear how the sound changes around the panels. The sound gets deader. Also when I experimented with moving the panels about, I can hear very big changes in BOO! with changes in panel position in the room.

What does this tell you about my mysterious room?

Ok some more effects to help you suss out the system/room – I tried a DecoTune centre-front (marked with the question mark in B1) reflective side facing me and it wasn’t that great. The two DecoTunes with the absorptive side facing the listener was removed and the S9ound Shutters put up again.

I got a pull back of images towards the front wall increasing the apparent distance between the listener. This created the Banana shaped soundstage that Sonic dislikes There was little improvement and Sonic felt that the BOO! was again less controlled. Also slight upward shift in pitch. It is this upward shift that I now listen for because from recent experience, this is what will cause difficulty down the road.

Then I removed the four Space Cones that supported by Sony Blu-ray player and replaced them with Small Harmonic Feet from Michael. The Harmonic Feet were a lot better than the Space Cones in this application – to be fair, the Space Cones are not designed to be equipment supports and when they are used this way they work better point up than down. With the Harmonic Feet, the soundstage is more projected towards the listener into the room with more impact and delineation in transients. This Sonic likes.

If Zonees are using a CD player in its case (top removed), look at where the manufacturer put the feet for the player, usually four pieces of rubber stuck to the bottom of the case. Pull the rubber pieces off and stick AAB1x1 cones in these same spots with thin, transparent 3M double sided tape. Doing this with Space Cones and now Harmonic Feet coupled the casing to the rack better and the even support of the chassis removed a torque effect on the thin casing and removed vibrations from the transport.

I have a couple of CDs that for some reason vibrate like crazy if the system is slightly out of balance (or if the casing is torqued). Sonic uses these CDs as tests to find the best, quietest placement because IMO, the less vibration there be in a CD playback, the less the servos have to work and the less error correction is needed to fill in the gaps. So that will give better musick!

This weekend I been listening to Schmelzer/Muffat Sonatas (Charles Medlam and The London Baroque), The Art of the Recorder (David Munrow), Bags and Trane (Milt Jackson and John Coltrane), Sichuan Qin Music (Wang Hua-De), Mike Bloomfield and Woody Harris (Gospel Music).

Sonic

"Hi Michael


Just to recap -- why is it I took down the Ikea wood blinds on the front windows and went down the Curtain route?

a. when I speak on the phone in the room, my voice gets echoey and the reflections bother me. I found a phone call in the room irritating and the "ringing" got in the way of my thinking. I reckon that if the room does this to my voice it has the same effect of messing up the musick.

b. was listening to Come Together (Beatles) -- and in the middle of the bass riff, I hit Pause. The music stopped but there was serious overhang in the bass (THUMmmm). Then I tried Pausing on the bass drum beats....same overhang....tried this with some other recordings....overhang too....so I reckon that this overhang must be corrupting the music.

I put the curtain up and a. and b. were much better. The room became so quiet.

I cannot logically believe that a. and b. have no effect on the music or are beneficial to music playback.

That's how Sonic got here....and my reluctance to apply any suggestion that increases the reflectivity of the room.

I am trying to trace how I got here from my notes. Why was it that I didn't report this earlier in my tune journey? This is too big an effect to ignore. Did I do something along the way that warped the Pressure Zones to cause this and the effect of the curtains are two wrongs making a right?"

Hi Sonic

These are the types of things that are very important to me. It's important for me to know how to capture and release the notes being made in their fullest. The way to do this is more than me sitting here listening but to also have listeners in other parts of the world. The development of the tune depends on this as we are going places that no one has. The question of too much energy has never worried me as too little energy. Once a portion of a note is lost it can not be brought back from the dead. Does this mean that there is a wall somewhere that needs direct absorption? I have not seen or heard this but that does not mean it does not exist. The last 2 days I have gone all out to try to find a cloth material in my arsenal to put on my front wall without it taking away from the sound and was unsuccessful. I truely believe there is a or many more than one pressure zone/s in your room that are yet to be controlled. As far as the Boo effect, I have seen rooms go from out of balance to perfect clarity and still be full of Boo. It is perhaps hard to visualize the zones in the room but they are amplifiers just as your components are. Do they have over hang? I would think so seeing that all amplifiers have over hang including the smallest of signal conduits. Where does this over hang constitute distortion? I don't know. That's like asking how long does a guitar really ring? And where does this ring become distortion? The answer is 2 fold. If the guitar is cut off in mid resonance it is distortion and if the guitar rings after the notes have turned into out of phase patterns it is distortion.

When we are talking about rooms though and their unique character of pressure because we are inside of them it is a science all on it's own. This is even more unique than we think. With rooms we are not on the outside looking in at a soundstage. This would take a glass wall between you and the stage. In our world we are actually in the soundstage. There is no way to separate us from the action going on in our rooms. This seems weird when you think about it as we are so many times thinking of our room being separated from us and it having these waves that are coming to us to hear. But this is not the case. The room itself "is" and we are the visitors hearing what is already there. Let me ask you a question. When you tune your guitar where do you tune it at? If you tune your guitar in a dampened part of the room and move it to a tuned part of the room it goes slightly out of tune. The same is true when you do the opposite. Second question. It what part of the room does your tuned guitar keep in pitch before going out of tune the longest? When you find that place in your room where the pitch stays the longest, tune your guitar there. Now take it to where your speakers are and play the guitar and hear how it is different from the area where the guitar sounded the best and had the longest tuned pitch. How did I know that where the speakers are is not the longest decay? Because your speakers are not your guitar. If this was a perfect world your speakers would resonant just like your guitar and so would the area where your ears are and you would be able to tune things in more clearly. Logic would tell us that the best sound would be where the decay was the longest, but because we are in a room that builds pressure we have to decide how much decay is too much. Where does it cross that line and become Boo? Would the long decay in your guitar be called distortion? No, it would be called pitch correctness. So my question is, is the Boo distortion or energy still needing to be tuned?

I have never heard a guitar tuned in a dead room hold pitch in all my years of recording and listening. In test that we have done a guitar will hold between 7 and 12 seconds of sustained pitch before wavering in an average room. We have had this last longer in a tuned room and shorter in a dampened room.

Hi Michael

I'm making another run at tuning the system thru simplicity and seeing where that goes with your guidance.

Sonic has bypassed the X-30 crossover, running the preamp direct to the main amp. The Janis W-1 subwoofer and the Rotel amplifier driving it have been physically removed from the room. AGAIN!

Everything else in the room and system is exactly the same. I'll post my impressions of the sound +24 hours after the mods were made and then Michael, you can comment and point out where I can go next.

Sonic